


a billion little pieces

by stelian



Series: thought you were a constellation [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Panic Attacks, Season 6 Compliant, Sensory Overload, broganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 07:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelian/pseuds/stelian
Summary: Shiro finds Keith, Keith finds Shiro, and together they find home again.





	a billion little pieces

**Author's Note:**

> if you've read [astronomy in reverse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415469%22), this is consistent with everything except for the very end section. if you haven't, welcome aboard!

Keith finds Shiro by mistake.

It’s a fact of living in the Official Middle Of Nowhere, Arizona, that the Galaxy Garrison owns everyone’s lives. His teacher is an ex-Garrison professor who decided she hated physics; half of his classmates have family that are enrolled; hell, his foster mother one time saw an interview with a Garrison astronaut and described in far too much detail her past love life with him. 

Every year, some Garrison person comes in and tries to teach a lesson to the youth to try to encourage them to apply. Typically, it’s some old man who lectures with a monotone about radio waves or astrochemistry or nuclear fusion or something their much older students learn, and everyone just sits and listens and feigns enthusiasm because they’re going to be the next Big Astroexplorer.

Keith, usually, pretends to be sick or takes a nap in the back of the classroom.

He’s eleven, he’s been in foster care for four years, his dad is dead and his mother left him, and he’s got nowhere to go. He likes space as much as the next person, but he’s stuck. The kids like Keith don’t have a future - they age out of the system, get a job in a grocery store or somewhere equally mundane, live a short life and die somewhere in the desert.

He’s in the process of looking for a nice closet to take a nap in when he runs into the familiar, bland gray uniform that always signaled the guest lecturer. Keith sighs, prepares to turn around and follow him (because he  _ knows  _ Ms. Martinez will ask about a small boy with hair that’s far too long), when he’s stopped.

“Hey! Uh, I know this sounds weird because I  _ should  _ know where I’m going, but could you direct me to Ms. Martinez’s classroom? I’m supposed to give a… I guess they call it a ‘guest lecture’, but you’re all in elementary school and that sounds really pretentious, but anyway- where can I find her?”

Keith just stares at him.

“Are you from the Garrison?”

“Yes?”

“You’re awfully young.”

The Garrison usually sends the old, respected professors to teach - not this one, who’s tall and lanky and  _ young _ . His uniform barely even fits - the sleeves bag around his hands while the pants end at his ankles. The result resembles a child playing dress-up in his parent’s clothes.

“Don’t say that. I’m secretly an old man,” he says, and laughs. “Anyway, I’m already late, and I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction?”

Keith hesitates. He could send him in the opposite direction and then go take his nap,  _ or  _ he could actually take him back and see if his lecture is any different. 

Something - some instinct against his nature - causes him to say, “Follow me. I need to go back there anyway.”

When they enter the classroom, Ms. Martinez throws a look at the lecturer, clearly confused. As Keith takes his seat he sees him pull her to the side, say something softly, and then she leaves the room.

It takes a lecturer a moment to stand at the front, look around at all of the students, and then he takes in a deep breath. “Hi guys. I know Commander Holt usually teaches this class, but he’s having a family emergency and I got sent here instead. Uh, I guess I should introduce myself, so I’m Takashi Shirogane, I’m a current student, and I’m supposed to teach you all about astro-biochemistry but I hate chemistry, so…” He looks around the room again, glances at the door, and then says, “Have any of you ever heard of variable stars?”

(After school, Keith goes to the main office to ask for an application.)

 

Shiro doesn’t find Keith.

When he wakes up, he feels… blank. Wrung-out, left to dry, and abandoned in the summer sun for days. There’s a peculiar emptiness somewhere in his mind that he can’t place.

He sees the past before the present. The battle comes back to him in flashes, up until a great Emptiness where a Big Something happened that he just… doesn’t remember.  

It’s quiet. The air feels still. Heavy. 

When he opens his eyes, there’s just stars. An ocean of them, really - denser than any star cluster he’s seen or read about. There are constellations, unfamiliar ones, patterns that knit together but seem to flit away.

It’s… familiar, somehow. An echo in his mind tells him he’s been here before, but he comes up empty. 

It’s quiet.

It’s still.

It’s quiet, except for a soft purring in his ears. If he closes his eyes, turns away from the not-stars, he can see his mother’s cat curled up against his chest.

 

Keith doesn’t find Shiro.

He looks. He really does. He spends hours combing the area, scanning radars for  _ something _ , for any sign of life amongst the debris, and every time he comes back with dry, burning eyes and a hollowness somewhere deep in his chest.

A week passes, and then another.

No one says anything about the passage of time, beyond a soft whispering of  _ maybe you should move on, maybe you should come home, maybe you shouldn't put all of your faith in one person, maybe you should give up on the one person that never gave up on you- _

Keith knows he should give up by the time the third week rolls around. There’s a lot that Shiro can- and  _ has _ \- survived that probably should have killed him, but three weeks drifting in space with absolutely no supplies is something beyond even him. 

But even finding a corpse floating in the empty space would be  _ something _ , and- as horrifying as it is to imagine dying completely alone in space, slowly losing air and  _ no, Keith, don’t think about that _ \- if nothing else, it’s  _ closure.  _

And it’s better than some of the scenarios Keith imagines when he tries (and fails) to sleep.

 

Shiro thinks he finds Keith huddled in a closet, again.

He’s looking for- for  _ something _ , he can’t remember- and he throws a door open, and almost shouts when he sees someone huddled in the bottom, legs curled tight to chest. 

“Keith, we’ve talked about this,” he says, squatting down to look at him. Keith doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look his way. “If one of your professors finds you in one of these-”

“You said it yourself. No one uses this shit anymore. I won’t be found,”  he says, voice flat. 

Of course Keith would use his own words against him. Of course. “Okay, fine, but that’s not the point. I know you need to escape sometimes, but you have a closet in your room. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Keith shifts, and suddenly he’s not in a closet- he’s slumped at a desk, face buried in his arms. His hair is longer. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not- I’m not made for this, Shiro.”

“Of course you are. There hasn’t been a pilot half as qualified as you here in  _ years _ . You’ve earned it more than anyone else,” someone says, and belatedly Shiro realizes it’s him. 

He turns around and suddenly he’s wearing red and white, and the lights are a brilliant white rather than a dull yellow. Keith’s mouth moves but no sound comes out- at first, and  _ then  _ the words come out with a delay, like an old TV movie that’s desynced- “I’m not anyone’s defender. This isn’t for me. I can’t- neither of us are fit to be paladins, don’t you see that?”

Shiro goes to speak but Keith is gone, and suddenly he’s laying down and he tries to turn his head to find him again. He sees a hint of dark hair and indigo eyes to his right, but his head won’t move so he just looks as far in that direction as possible.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and there’s something tinny and faint in his voice. “I know you believe in me, for whatever reason, but you’re wrong. You might as well just give up.”

“I won’t give up on you, and I’m not sorry for putting faith in you,” Shiro says, though his mouth is dry and his jaw is clamped shut, for some reason. “I’ve seen enough of you that I know you’re genuinely a  _ good person _ . Maybe it doesn’t feel like it, but I know it’s true. There are people out there who rely on you and love you. I know it feels strange, and I know you aren’t used to it, but you have a team out there who cares for you.”

In the corner of his eye, Keith ripples and vanishes. Shiro is left with a resounding emptiness, a ringing in his ears, and a dull throb at the base of his skull.

He sees the stars again.

He reaches for the soft presence that’s been in the back of his mind for so long,  _ asking _ , because if anyone knows what happened, it would be her-

_ Safe _ , is all he gets. 

_ Safe. _

  
  


Keith finds Shiro, just when he’s given up hope.

When the Black Lion opens up to him, just for a moment, speaking to him in more than just a low buzz, he freezes. But there’s a buzz to her, too, a soft murmur of  _ there, there, right there, _ and he knows. Seconds later, though, she closes off again, and it’s back to the silence that she normally gives him.

It’s easy to take the fighter into the Castle (granted, after a short argument with Allura). It isn’t easy to actually get the thing open from the outside, nor is it easy to get the occupant out of it.

Shiro isn’t any more than half-conscious, limp and weak against the seat. His eyes flutter open, squinting at the bright lights above him, but he gives no sign of recognizing Keith or his surroundings. After a few moment of trying to manipulate a much larger body, Keith sinks to the floor and pages for Allura.

“Please, don’t- don’t let anyone else in here. Not yet.”

He manages to pry the helmet off after it gets stuck on  _ something _ , later revealed to be a knot of hair haphazardly tied back. Keith takes in the haggard appearance, the thin lines of his face, the hair that’s somehow longer than his, but stops when he peers underneath the suit’s collar and sees tattered, dark purple.

Again.

It happened again.

Allura throws the hangar doors open, breathing heavily. Her eyes widen on Keith, hovering over a figure that’s familiar but not quite, and her whole demeanor just… falls. The royalty in her posture slumps to something young, like a girl crushed under the weight of an entire universe relying on her.

“He’s alive?” she says, voice rough.

“Barely.” She tilts her head to the side, and Keith adds, “I think he’s malnourished, or something. He doesn’t seem wounded, but I don’t know.”

She lifts him gingerly, mindful of the soft sound that escapes Shiro’s lips when she brushes his thigh. Allura pauses, something wistful in her eyes, before she spins and heads for the doors.    
Keith hesitates, an ache starting somewhere in his head. It feels _wrong._ It feels too easy, after all of this time, for him just to show up. But he follows her anyway, because Shiro’s back and that’s good, right?

Right?

 

Shiro finds Keith when no one else can.

It’s been quiet, all things considering. The Castle-Ship is repaired, the damaged crystal is gone, and they’ve all been staring uneasily at each other. It’s ancient technology, they’re living with ancient aliens, they’re  _ piloting  _ ancient semi-conscious alien technology, and it’s not something they typically consider. So it’s been quiet. There are planets to save and Galra to fight, but not right now.

Except Keith has disappeared.

Keith retreating for a few hours is normal. It’s how he is and always has been - when he’s scared, he hides inside himself and builds walls that no one can tear down (except Shiro managed to drill a hole straight through one, but it was a several-year effort), but he vanishes for a full day and  _ then  _ it’s concerning.

Searching is a group effort, but it’s slow. The obvious targets - the bridge, the projection room, the training deck- are all empty; all that remain are the empty rooms that once meant to house hundreds but now sit vacant.

_ “Shiro?”  _ Hunk pages eventually.  _ “I found him, but I don’t think I’m equipped for this.” _

“Send me your location,” Shiro says, halfway through combing the supply closets.

He finds him wedged behind a pipe that looks so  _ normal _ it’s almost off-putting in the Altean environment. Keith is curled on his side, hands clasped around his ears, and his eyes are shut tight. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Hunk says, arms shaking. “I mean, I don’t think he’s hurt, but he looks bad and he won’t answer me at all? And I know Keith’s grumpy and likes to be alone but this is  _ scary,  _ man, is it still the Castle being haunted or -?”

“Hunk, it’ll be fine. This happens sometimes. You did good.” He puts a hand on his shoulder, gentle, and gives him a smile. “Can you tell everyone that Keith is fine? I can try to calm him down.”

Hunk nods. “Is there anything I can do?”

It takes Shiro a moment to think through the meltdowns in the past. It’d been so long, and he was so busy when the last one happened that he hadn’t really been able to help, but…

“Can you make some food? Something really bland, but with a definite texture? It might be a while until he’ll eat, but it’s good to have something ready.”

“Got it. Keep me posted!” Hunk says, and he takes off in the opposite direction.

When Shiro kneels down to look at Keith again, he looks worse than he thought. He’s pale, his jaw is clenched, his hands shake even though they’re buried in his hair. 

It’s a bad one.

“Hey, Keith?” he says, his voice soft. “It’s me. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but I’m here. Can you hear me?” Keith gives the slightest nod. That’s good. He’s listening and he can follow directions. “Great! I’m not going anywhere. Is this a sensory issue?”

Another slight nod. If it’s sensory, this isn’t really helping - Keith is laying half-against the pipe, facing the lights that are always just a bit too bright, and there’s a faint, unmistakable sound of engine around. “Buddy, I know it may be hard, but can we move? I don’t think this is helping you at all. There’s a few rooms nearby. They smell a bit, but they’re quiet and we can dim the lights. Would that help?”

It seems to take Keith an eternity to respond, but eventually he nods again. With slow, pained movements he opens his eyes, uncurls his arms, and sits up.

“You’re doing great. Can you take my hand? I’ll lead you there.” Shiro unstraps the fingerless gloves he’s taken to wearing, wary of the textured palms. He reaches out with his hand, but Keith shakes his head. “What is it?”

Keith, instead, reaches for his other hand, wrapping around it and clinging.  _ Oh _ . He’d always liked the feeling of cool metal; whether it was the simulator dashboard or his hoverbike on a cold day, even on bad days the sensation helped. 

Shiro leads him into the nearest unoccupied room. He dims the lights immediately, slightly darker than he typically prefers it - sometimes he still struggles to adjust to the harsh, blue lights after a year of dim purple - and then sits beside Keith on the bed.

“Any better?” he asks. Keith shrugs. At this point, the best thing for him will be to sleep it off. He’ll be a bit jittery and extra skittish for a day or so, but rest will wash away the worst of the panic and let him start over. “Do you want me to stay?”

Instead of answering, Keith squeezes Shiro’s hand and smiles. He curls up again, still shaking but less vigorously.

“I won’t leave,” Shiro says. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

(Later, when he goes to the kitchen to grab something for both of them to eat, Hunk thrusts a bowl in his arms. 

It’s rice. It’s real, actual rice - albeit, it’s slightly red-tinged and tastes a bit more nutty than normal, but it’s  _ rice _ .)

 

It isn’t Shiro that Keith finds.

Keith sits cross-legged on the floor of Shiro’s room, staring at the sleeping figure huddled under a pile of blankets. He knows he should have left hours ago and staying here is an invasion of privacy.

But.

But he’s not going to let go, not now. There’s a fear somewhere in the depths of his mind that he’ll turn around and Shiro will be gone; that he’ll wake up from this dream and find out it was never real in the first place. If quelling that means ruining his back and not sleeping for hours, well… 

It had been the longest week of his life. Between the countless missions trying to stay ahead of Lotor and the constant stress of watching over Shiro, Keith was running on just a few hours of sleep. The worst part was, he wasn’t tired because of being awake for so long.

It was the little things that made him exhausted. It was the way that Pidge and Hunk muttered to each other whenever he came up. It was how, after a pod had healed the wound on his thigh, Coran had had a long private meeting with Allura. It was the little things that didn’t add up, like the fact that hair  _ didn’t  _ grow that fast, like how convenient it was that he just turned up after months of silence, that when he spoke to Keith there was something slightly  _ off _ .

He doesn’t want to think about it. They all saw the prison uniform, tattered and filthy, underneath the space suit he’d been wearing; obviously something very bad happened in the past few months. 

Shiro stirs and lets out a soft breath. If nothing else, Keith thinks, this is the most he’s slept in a long time. Since the pod released him he’d mostly been in a state of semi-consciousness, and even when he was awake he seemed awfully reserved. It’s the depression setting in,  _ finally _ , and it hits him hard and keeps him in bed and unkempt.

He isn’t the Shiro that Keith knows. Not right now. He couldn’t be, not after all that’s happened.

But maybe someday he will be again.

 

It isn’t Keith that Shiro finds.

He walks, now, but his legs are too light. The old aches that had settled in his joints are missing, and he feels almost like he’s floating. It’s fuzzy. He walks in a straight line but nothing changes, and he looks up and the stars keep shifting in a dizzying array.

“What happened to me?” he asks her again, but she says nothing.

He looks up at the stars again, and the wide-eyed child in him stretches up and tries to touch the stars and he-

Shiro feels his hand curl around something bright and warm, and he looks down and he’s floating. He looks down and he sees the purple-tinted air, the mirror-like ground, and he remembers.

“Why did you bring me back here?” he asks, and she simply purrs.

_ I can show you _ , she says, and he remembers.

Keith finds Shiro, though he doesn’t know it.

He sits in the cockpit, hands clenched around the controls, and he  _ wills  _ it not to be so, he prays that nothing lights up and there’s no response, but…

Shiro puts his hand on his shoulder but it falls right through. He’s dead. He has no physical form. But Keith is so close, and so  _ real _ . 

“Why don’t you want this?” he asks, but Keith doesn’t hear - couldn’t hear anyway, because he’s dead and doesn’t have a mouth or a tongue or a voice - and he tenses, prepares to leave.

_ We need to do this _ , Black says, and Shiro agrees, and reaches over Keith and touches the controls one last time-

And they flicker to life, Black flickers to life, and they’re one again-

It’s like coming back (but he has no life, he’s dead and there’s no body)-

It ends. Keith steps out of the cockpit.

Years pass and minutes pass until he enters again.

 

_ I’m proud of you, he says every time, but Keith never hears. _

 

Shiro almost,  _ almost, _ finds Keith.

Every time he’s in Black he reaches out, tries to connect to him and let him know that he’s  _ there _ , he’s proud of him and he didn’t abandon him, but he just - he can’t quite reach, and then he waits centuries and seconds to try again, just to fail.

But he’ll do it. Again, and again, and again and again and again and again.

As many times as it takes.

 

Keith finds Shiro through a screen.

He sits in his room on the Blade of Marmora base, knees curled up to his chest, and he watches the Voltron Show every time it airs. He laughs at the wooden acting, at the overdramatic choreography. Sometimes when he’s undercover he hears fans of ‘Shiro the Hero’ swooning, and it takes all of his strength not to yell that that’s his brother, right there, who one time survived a week of exams by drinking just coffee and eating raw blocks of instant ramen.

 

Shiro finds Keith when he isn’t expecting it.

It’s been years since he’d been in fourth-year living spaces; he visited once to check on someone in one of his study-groups who hadn’t shown up for a few days, but otherwise it had been… what, six years? God, he was old.

Keith answers the door when he knocks. The fourth-year rooms are nicer- there’s much more space, the beds are a bit more comfortable, there’s space for chairs and small bits of furniture. He peers at him for a moment, confused, and then Shiro says, “Hey. I got a call and I… wanted to let you know that I need to leave for a week. Family emergency.”

“Family emergency?” Keith says and tilts his head. “What happened to your mom?”

“She’s fine, but she needs to give up the apartment. She wants me to come and help her pack it up.”

Keith gives him that Look again, the ‘I-know-you’re-lying-to-me-and-you-that- know-I-know-so-just-say-it’, and Shiro just sighs. “Fine. It got worse. She needs to have constant care and she’s probably never going to be able to come home, so I need to help her with legal things and packing up the apartment and all of that wonderful fun stuff.”

Keith’s face softens. It’s been eight years since his dad died and it was sudden when it happened - one day he was fine, the next he went out into the desert and came back bleeding and too warm and then he was just gone. It wasn’t the slow progression over years, the agreements, the letting them go before they’re even gone. 

“Can I come with you?” he asks, and Shiro just stares at him and then turns on his heel and runs. 

He comes back an hour later with a plane ticket, a guide to basic Japanese, and a smile for the first time since he got that call. 

Keith has never been to California before, and he stares in wonder at the mountains that Shiro had seen every day since he’d moved to America. When they get into the apartment the oldest, shaggiest, crankiest looking cat immediately hisses at Keith but violently rubs Shiro’s leg. “This is the famous Ryou,” he says, scooping up the thing that looks like little more than a pile of fur, “He’s at least fifteen years old and will live forever on pure spite.”

Later, when they visit Shiro’s mom, she smiles warmly at Keith and says something in Japanese and Shiro immediately bursts into laughter and squeezes her hand, and it’s something so sweet but unfamiliar that Keith has to leave the room for a while.

(When they get back to the apartment that night Shiro tells him that she asked if he’d brought her a grandson, or if she’d have to adopt a second son).

  
  


_ As many times as it takes. _ __  
  


Keith finds Shiro.

And Shiro.

And Shiro.

And Shiro.

And Shiro and Shiro and Shiro and Shiro and Shiro and Shiro and Shiro and Shiro - 

 

Shiro finds Keith, for the first time in  _ years _ , and he doesn’t know what to do.

He wakes up in a start, a familiar drugged-haziness lingering in his blood. The good news is that he isn’t on the table, whatever he’s laying on is too soft for that, but he’s not in his cell and he doesn’t know where else he could be, and there’s a weight next to his chest.

A weight next to his chest.

His eyes open and he tenses immediately, shifts to protect his chest and -

Why is he doing this?

He looks down and there’s a head of unruly hair cradled in two arms (arms! Human arms!) next to his chest, and it takes him a minute but…

“Keith?” he says, and he springs to life. Keith is awake in seconds and he’s  _ Keith _ , a bit skinnier and with hair a bit longer but he’s Keith. “What…” he starts, but there’s so many ways to finish that question.  _ What happened. What are you doing out here. Where are we. _

“It’s you,” Keith says. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

“It’s me,” Shiro repeats. 

Keith stares at him for a moment, and then he startles again. “Oh! I got some clothes for you. I figured you probably don’t want to keep wearing that, and I don’t have anything that’s yours, but I have some of my dad’s clothes still. I don’t know how well it’ll fit, but it’s something.”

He throws a pile of clothing and Shiro just stares at it. Clothing. Actual clothing, designed for humans. It’s been…

“How long has it been?”

“You went missing a year ago,” Keith says, and he leans against the wall and crosses his arms. In the moment he looks old, older than he should. One year. That was it. “They said you were dead. Where did you go?”

“I…” Shiro starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish. Where  _ did _ he go? “I went farther than any human has. I don’t know where I went, but it was far. But you found me.” He looks at Keith, and he looks through Keith, and he asks, “How did you find me?”

“I’ll always find you,” Keith says, hardly loud enough to hear.

 

_ as many times as it takes as many times as it takes AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES _

Keith finds Shiro when he isn’t himself.

It’s a situation they’ve both been afraid of - he remembers nights where he’d run into Shiro, sitting on the floor in the hallway, turning his arm on and off and staring at it. “I don’t know what it does. I don’t know how I got it,” he’d say, and then he’d look at Keith and he’d look so  _ tired  _ and he’d say, “I don’t know what she did to me. I don’t even know if I’m myself.”

He fights like a gladiator, not a paladin.

  
  


_ You’re my brother. _

_ I love you. _

 

Shiro finds Keith. 

He reaches out his hand.

He - and Black, because he doesn’t know where she ends and he begins anymore - take him home.

  
  


_ I won’t give up on you. _

 

“You found me,” Shiro says, and he slumps in Keith’s arms, exhausted and weak and occupying a body that isn’t really his, merging with a mind that is his and isn’t his at the same time. But he’s back. He’s whole again. He’s missing an arm and he has more scars than he did before but he’s whole again, and they’re together.

 

_ As many times as it takes.  _

 

They find each other, and the Black Lion finds them, and they find themselves home again.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> surprise bitch, bet you never thought i'd continue this. 
> 
> i could say a lot right here but my heart pretty much melted. "i died keith" is such a MOOD.
> 
> like last time, this was written very quickly and not well-edited. i just had a lot of feelings. again, the title comes from [venus, by sleeping at last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFTs2K8rOTs), which is a beautiful song that really encapsulates how i feel about these two. there is a section of this that i cut at the last minute because i feel like it's too long, but it may get posted eventually. we shall see.
> 
> as always, if you want to scream about gay space children (or astro-biochemistry) you can find me on [tumblr.hell](https://pippims.tumblr.com)
> 
> thank you for reading. i truly appreciate it!


End file.
